Sunday, September 2, 2012

Mexican Menu Siegfried

This Paco's menu was my homage to "classical" music and opera although Wagner's great works were hardly "classical." I depicted Siegfried, the hero of the Ring Cycle, dressed in his neato-barbarian outfit. I copied a leitmotif out of one of my old music reference books, so that the New England Conservatory crowd could sing along. I also included many symbols such as the sword, the dragon, and the ravens, all of which appear in the opera.

The character himself with long red hair is actually an imaginary character of mine, an opera-singing Jesuit, originally from Switzerland (hence the white cross on red square on his cape, even though there were no Jesuits from or in Switzerland). This hair was a wig, but he really was red-haired. In my imaginary life for him, he performed the role of Siegfried as an amateur. In his main job he was a Jesuit priest and a professor of German literature, with an emphasis on the influence of Jung and Freud on 20th century writing. He could also go on at length on the religious aspects of the "folkish" movement in German culture. And he was fond of Mexican food, or just about any other type of food.